Chapter 116
I SWIVELED MY NECK HARD and peered in the direction of the house on the hill. I saw two of the Sullivan boys running down the front steps. They were dressed in their pajamas and had bare feet.
“Get back!” Sullivan screamed at them. “Get inside the house, you two! Get inside!”
Then Caitlin Sullivan rushed out of the house in a bathrobe, trying to hold back her youngest son, then picking him up in her arms. She was screaming bloody murder at the two other boys to come back inside.
Meanwhile, gunshots were happening everywhere, loud blasts that echoed in the night. Bursts of light illuminated trees, boulders, fallen bodies on the grass.
Sullivan kept yelling ? “Get back in the house! Get back! Caitlin, get them inside!”
The boys didn’t listen; they just kept coming across the lawn toward their father.
One of the hit men turned his gun on the running figures, and I shot him in the side of the neck. He spun around, fell, and stayed down. I thought, I just saved the lives of Sullivan’s boys . What did it mean? That we were even for the time he came to my house and didn’t kill anybody? Was I supposed to shoot Caitlin Sullivan now as payback for Maria?
Nothing made much sense to me on this dark, bloodstained lawn.
Another hit man zigzagged in a fast retreat until he reached the woods. Then he dove headfirst into the brush. One final hit man stood out in the open. He and Sullivan faced off and fired on each other. The soldier spun and went down, blood rushing from a gaping wound in his face. Sullivan was left standing.
He turned to Sampson and me.